I wouldn't call call Aristotle merely a scribe. After all, he is the first man that we know of who was a keen observer of nature, both living, and non living, and offer up some sort of coherent theories as to the make up of things and how they functioned. Also, offered up a counterpoint to Plato's forms. Probably his most glaring weakness was that he spread himself too thin. The guy was interested in everything under the sun (and the sun too).

As for Homer, The Illiad and The Oddessy were written so far back before the period we are discussing, until we don't have any real evidence as to exactly when they were written, or in fact, that anyone named Homer even wrote the things. Herodotus told a good story, but only in a generalized way can we say that his "Histories" is really a history book. Rather, I would say it is part travellog and part fairy tales. He did tell a good story, as I said, and he did give good insight into some of the more obscure cultures of the near east. His is a great work no doubt, but one has to realize what it is, and accept it as that.

I would say that Thucydides was a more accurate and insightful historian.

I agree and look at Islam from a memetic pov (point of view). I have known of few major Philosophers that thought highly of this Religion which as you rightly point out appears to be highly resistant to change and carries with it a highly militaristic component.

http://www.memecentral.com/

* What is a meme?

* Memes are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life.

* Isn't memetics just a fancy name for _________ (fill in the blank with "cultural evolution", "behavioral psychology", "sociobiology", or anything else)? Why is this anything new?

* The breakthrough in memetics is in extending Darwinian evolution to culture. There are several exciting conclusions from doing that, one of which is the ability to predict that ideas will spread not because they are "good ideas", but because they contain "good memes" such as danger, food and sex that push our evolutionary buttons and force us to pay attention to them.

* Who invented memes?

* Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins is credited with first publication of the concept of meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.

* If memes control our thoughts and therefore our actions, what about free will?

* We continually understand more and more about how our bodies and minds work. We now know that trillions of organic nanomachines in the cells of our bodies work together to give us life. Neither that understanding nor the new understanding of our minds that memetics will give us should affect the philosophical question of free will.

* In Virus of the Mind, you seem to neglect truth as a main reason that memes replicate, focusing instead on psychological button-pushing, evangelism, and other non-obvious means. Why?

* First, the theoretical reason. Our minds evolved to support survival and reproduction in the ancestral environment (Stone Age). The kind of truth that would have aided that would have pertained to knowledge of terrain, seasons, and so on. These things are concrete and simple. Our society today is so complex that concrete and simple things that "make sense" are likely to out-compete "true" memes that are less appealing. Second, empirical evidence shows that students are getting worse and worse at knowledge tests.

Oh I see. Caligula and the rest of those would-be 'gods' were not a disaster for the Roman Empire and Europe, Christiandom was a disaster for Europe.

I sense a propblem of the will here, not the intellect. No one smart enough to use a computer could possibly make the statement you made unless a willful blindness is throughly in place.

The Roman Empire was falling from its own corruption, as all power tends to do. Only because of the saving work of Jesus Christ on its citizens could a handful of nations rise from the ashes of the Roman Empire to rule the rest of the world for about two centuries. Without that spiritual capital, the nations of western Europe would not have been exalted over other nations of the world.

As the light of Christiandom faded from those shores, it burned more brightly in American and we had "the American Century". If you want to know what nations will be the greatest nations on Earth a generation from now, look on the nations where the Gospel of Jesus Christ is ascendant. This is the lesson of History since the reformation.

Once, it was like Islam is now, full of fire and passion and global conquest, but now is nothing more than memories.

Don't know many Christians, do you? The fire among many young Catholics in this Country is palpable. And we're having lots of kids, while our secular brethren are wasting away...

I don't really mind, either. The glory of European civilization came from the pagan parts- Rome and Greece, and their rebirth and rejection of Christianity in the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Boy, you bought the academic "Western Civ" view of history hook, line, and sinker, didn't you? If not for Christianity, there would have been no Renaissance, no "Enlightenment." If not for Christians, the works of classical Greece and Rome would have been lost to us. If not for valiant Christians at Tours, at Constantinople, at Jerusalem, on Malta, at Lepanto, at Vienna, etc., Europe may have been overrun by Islam on any number of occasions. Any guesses as to what an Islamic Europe would have meant to the "Renaissance" and "Enlightenment?" And certainly, without Christianity, there could not have been a United States.

You want to talk about "tired", try studying the later Roman/Byzantine Empire period. False dead-end that it was, paganism was recognized as a fraud by most Romans as early as late Republican Roman times. It wasn't paganism that led to the greatness of Rome and Greece. Both cultures possessed an inherent longing for the truth--both in terms of science and religion. It was this inherent virtue that allowed Greco-Roman civilization to create an educational system without equal in the ancient world. It was this same inherent virtue that caused them to eventually reject paganism and accept Christianity (with a little help from the Holy Spirit, no doubt!)

Another example of "tired" would be our current anti-Christian postmodern culture. It is moribund; its advocates are aging and those replacing them aren't nearly as convincing charlatans as they were. While you may not realize it yet, the zeitgeist is moving again...

Good question. I'd say that any original thought that is written down for posterity, and is still read and taken seriously many years afterward is "great." And no, I don't think there are a lot of great works written in the last century or so. They haven't stood the test of time yet.

Christianity was a disaster for Europe. It was only through turning to the traditions of pagan Rome, such as the Roman Catholic Church and most of the early kingdoms (for example, the Goths that ended the Western Roman Empire were more "Roman" in their habits than the Eastern Empire soldiers that came to retake Italy), that civilization survived.

That explains why the cities of Sicily and Italy were so quick to throw open their gates to Belisarius and his meagre army of 10,000 Greeks in defiance of the Goths and their hundreds of thousands occupying the land.

Also, civilization really only survived in Byzantium during the Dark Ages. Your noble barbarians nearly extinguished it in Western Europe. If not for the efforts of the Pope at Rome, some monks in Ireland, and Charles Martel at Tours, there's no reason to believe that the civilization of the ancient world would have survived at all in the West.

That you refuse to give Christianity its historical due is an act of supreme cultural ingratitude on your part.

Not to mention the laws of Europe (the civil code is a direct descendant from Roman Law) and well, in a good part, those of America.

You, of course, neglect to mention that Roman law was a horrible mish-mash until Constantine, Theodosius, and Justinian (all Christian emperors) came along and regularized it. Indeed, it is the Justinianic Code that much of European law was based.

Let's hear it for that old pagan doctor Hypocrites whose oath banned abortions....

An examination of history will show that only the Catholics (under the Pope as a king of the Papal States or Emperor over Catholic monarchs) initiated true "theocratic" states (ruled by a religious leader). The Eastern Christians actually had a seperation of church and state but they never called it that. I think the term the Orthodox use is a "symphonic relationship". The Byzantine and Russian emperors were not heads of the church but rather protectors. This is the model that later Protestant monarchs adopted.

That is my very generalized view of things.

Our constitution does just fine without the mention of God whatsoever.

Not true. Perhaps some human sacrificing cults/religions did, but one of the things that made Rome absolutely detest Carthage was its religious practice of sacrificing many young people(ie. children) every year to its god, Baal.

Actually, as far as I know, the Phoenicians are a "somewhat" mysterious Semitic tribe that are related to, but not the direct ancestors of Arabs and Hebrews. In fact, I think it can be confidently said that they are NOT the ancestors of the Palestinians.

The Greeks and Romans didn't throw innocents into a pit of fire! Nor did the majority of barbarian tribes. That isn't to say they couldn't be cruel, but it's not like barbarity, cruelty and torture STOPPED with the advent of Christian dominance in Europe. It took Reformation, Renaissance and the Enlightement for inhumanity to be given a name and labelled an enemy to the spirit.

Phoenicians, while a part of the ancient world, are NOT the ancestors of Europeans.

The worst civilization in history, by human sacrificing standards, remains the Aztecs. They not only killed millions during their reign, but ATE THEM. They would also drown babies as a sacrifice to the rain god. The Spanish did humanity a favor.

} the Phoenicians are a "somewhat" mysterious Semitic tribe... I think it can be confidently said that they are NOT the ancestors of the Palestinians.

That is certainly true. The Phoenicians were a tall, often red haired Semitic tribe with a Semitic language who appeared to be not unlike todays Irish or Scandinavians. There is speculation they may have come from the tribe of Dan, since part of Dan can be traced to the region as a major sailing and shipping nation.

Danites were also traced up the major East European rivers (named after them) like the Don, Danube, Dneiper and many others. Denmark takes it's name from Danmark, the tribe (or mark) of Dan.

172
posted on 05/31/2003 10:29:03 AM PDT
by DensaMensa
(He who controls the definitions controls History. He who controls History controls the future.)

Interesting. I've heard a few theories about the Phoenicians(among other ancient peoples) but one of the more astounding is that they successfully sailed around Africa. I've heard about them discovering America too, but I think that's a bit far-fetched.

The Phonecian Sailing exploits are Arab Esteem day fictions IMO. They went as far as they needed to get their slaves. That great hero (Hanna?) saw Elephants and Gorillas in .... Morocco and Senegal. Yep, that's where they are. Right by that Volcano he saw erupt.

...and then only allowing the clergy to learn Latin. Latin was the common language of the learned in both Catholic and Protestant countries until the 18th Century. Most of the teachers and students at university were laymen. For instance, Thomas More, the "man for all seasons."

The Eastern Christians actually had a seperation of church and state but they never called it that. I think the term the Orthodox use is a "symphonic relationship". The Byzantine and Russian emperors were not heads of the church but rather protectors. This is the model that later Protestant monarchs adopted.

You're out of your mind. The East is where the term Caesaropapism came from. The Emperor replaced patriarchs pretty much at will, and even Popes when his agents could reach them. Meanwhile, the Western model had the monarchs as protectors of the Church--especially the French kings. You've got it exactly backwards.

The Greeks and Romans didn't throw innocents into a pit of fire! Nor did the majority of barbarian tribes. That isn't to say they couldn't be cruel, but it's not like barbarity, cruelty and torture STOPPED with the advent of Christian dominance in Europe.

Uh, to a large extent, it did. Much to the chagrin of the remaining pagans, the Christian emperors of the late Roman empire had an annoying habit of closing down arenas where thousands of innocent Christian martyrs had been butchered, savaged by wild animals, roasted on gridirons, and otherwise put to death for nothing other than practicing their religion. Yes, Christian dominance put a serious crimp barbarity, cruelty, and torture.

You would fault Christian Europe for not halting such practices all together for all time. But before you do, name for me one nation or civilization that existed for over 100 years where such things were totally absent.

Except for the fact that slavery in Rome was more like indentured servitude. Many "slaves" had slaves of their own, owned property, worked as civil servants, were often released upon death of the master, were taught trades such as medicine and drafting, married freely among their own, were often eulogized upon their death, were sometimes adopted outright and even buried in family tombs. Many masters considered their slaves as friends and wept upon their death.

Plus the very fact that they were war prosioners- who were usually just killed anyway, and it was 2000 years ago, make recent slavery much, much, much worse.

The Islamic invasion of Europe will be complete in around 20 to 30 years. They will have conquered the continent.

The Germans, Russians and Spaniards will emerge from their coma and start 86ing riff raff. Ruthlessly. The Danes, Poles, Baltics and Eastern European nations will make Muslims "void where prohibited." The Scandihoovians like their homogenous lifestyle, they're not game.

London has always been a hub of Arab/Muslim commerce and community, and that's a good thing overall. A really vibrant community.

I'm hopeful that the patriots in European states will finally step up and save their countries. I saw big German Arayan poster boys averting the menacing and sneering gaze of young Arab men loitering in cafes, markets and beer gardens throughout Bonn and Munich. They abide those punks bad eyeing them. One day, they'll turn them inside out. They're the boys from Deustschland for God's sake ... they need to clean house. I don't care about the French, Swiss and Belgians, let them enjoy the cultural contributions of Islamist cigarette use.

Culturally, the Goths that settled in Italy were more Roman than Belisarius. While the Eastern Empire had long forgotten many of the customs of Rome (always being more Greek), the Goths practiced them meticulously as best they were able.

You also conspicuously leave out the Arab copyists from your list of the saviors of civilization. However, that wouldn't fit your Christian agenda too well, would it?

Charles Martel at Tours was not fighting primarily a religious war, although later generations have portrayed it as such. It was simply a defense against an invading army. He would have fought just as much against Christian as Muslim.

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